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Composting LawnsWant to know a dirty little secret that can help your lawn? Skip has a tip. |
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Transcript: Composting Lawns
Even though it’s winter time here in Texas, our warm season turf grasses are still fairly active. They may have slowed growth, but the leaves are continuing to capture sunlight and build carbohydrates, and the roots are growing very actively during our warm Texas winters.This is a good time to apply a thin layer of compost over the soil surface. If you apply about a third of a inch over your grass, it will fall in between the blades of grass, cover the soil, and then as spring rains come, begin to feed the turf a little bit of nutrient which will carry on into the growing season and well into the summer, in fact.
You only want to put it about a third of an inch deep because you don’t want to smother the grass, but just a little bit. Another thing that will do is cover the bare soil areas, and help deter some of those weeds that will begin sprouting in the spring, creating summer weed problems in your lawn.
You want to use a finely screened compost product, nothing real chunky because you want it to settle on down in between the blades of grass and not smother the surface. Apply it evenly over the lawn, and then use a garden rake turned upside down to spread it out. By turning the rake upside down, it’s a lot easier to spread it smoothly over the surface of the grass.
This finely screened compost is chocked full of nutrients. Once you spread it out, you can just let nature take care of it from there. It will feed your lawn on into the spring, summer, and even into the fall. And you’ll have a beautiful lawn to show for it.
With your common sense tip on feeding your lawn with a light top dressing of composte, I’m Skip Richter.
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Last Updated:
July 6, 2006